I don't doubt it in the short term, but I fear these are the sorts of articles that give people one more reason to want to stick their employees in open offices.
The usual excuses presented to employees are handwavey things like "collaboration" and "teamwork", but the excuses presented to other managers can also involve things like "employees are more likely to feel self-conscious from visibility, and less likely to slack off". Even that's just scrounging for some excuse other than cutting corners to save money.
I hate this trend in management so much. I'm a combat vet with ptsd, and I've noticed companies more and more trying to do stupid open office layouts to save money and achieve this same result, but there are those of us it majorly negatively impacts our productivity in the medium to long term. Add on top that now instead of being able to think about a problem deeply, I get interrupted every 3 minutes by some adhoc query by those around me, so my thinking power feels hampered to the point it's stressing me so bad it's been aggravating my ptsd and I find myself wanting to drink and smoke.
Companies are digging their own grave with shit like this.
What I found work surprisingly well is to sit in a cafe with my back to busy foot traffic. There're lots of transient strangers passing by behind with the potential of seeing my screen. In that case, I cannot really goof off, like browsing ycombinator.
Procrastination has destroyed my life. Three years ago I finally achieved my dream of working from home. I was writing my thesis and believed I could finish my masters in 8 months. I decided to fully focus on it and, afterwards, I would create my long dreamed own software company. It worked really well for some weeks. I was much more focused than I used to be working in regular offices, with bosses. But soon I starte…
Working from home changed my life in the opposite direction. Being able to fully manage my own time and not have someone breathing down my neck has enabled me to actually not procrastinate.
I used to suffer from a lot of stress and anxiety and I think that fueled my procrastination. Now that I no longer suffer from those, I can just focus on work.
For a while I've wondered how I even started procrastinating as hard as I did. I used to be the type to first get all pending tasks done and then go and enjoy my free time, but at some point it flipped. It's weird.
Procrastination has destroyed my life. Three years ago I finally achieved my dream of working from home. I was writing my thesis and believed I could finish my masters in 8 months. I decided to fully focus on it and, afterwards, I would create my long dreamed own software company. It worked really well for some weeks. I was much more focused than I used to be working in regular offices, with bosses. But soon I starte…
Hey, maybe what actually „destroyed your life” was the dream to have your own company? Seems like you may not be built for it, it is definitely not for everyone.
I hate this trend in management so much. I'm a combat vet with ptsd, and I've noticed companies more and more trying to do stupid open office layouts to save money and achieve this same result, but there are those of us it majorly negatively impacts our productivity in the medium to long term. Add on top that now instead of being able to think about a problem deeply, I get interrupted every 3 minutes by some adhoc qu…
Does your company not have productivity rooms/spaces? I've found that to be the happy middle between completely open and closed-office for me.
Though I do agree I was significantly more productive at companies where I had my own office/shared with only one other person.
I don't like working from home.
Working from home feels lonely and dead-end to me.
I'd rather have a commute and sit in an open office plan, despite all the obvious drawbacks.
Also, I've recently realised what makes me productive as fuck:
Procrastination has destroyed my life. Three years ago I finally achieved my dream of working from home. I was writing my thesis and believed I could finish my masters in 8 months. I decided to fully focus on it and, afterwards, I would create my long dreamed own software company. It worked really well for some weeks. I was much more focused than I used to be working in regular offices, with bosses. But soon I starte…
To be blunt, I think it's the wrong kind of attitude toward school. You focused too much on the end result, getting the degree, rather than enjoying the journey, the learning and the obtaining of knowledge. It shouldn't matter whether it's 8 months or 14 months, as long as you learned during those time. As far as creating your own software company, it sounds like you are looking for the fantasy of entrepreneurship than building products. You don't need a company to build products. You could start building even in school. Really, forget creating company, wife, or getting rich, just focus on building a MVP. And enjoy it along the way. The rest will come.
I'm a member of a private online pomodoro group, every 30 minutes or so the bell dings and we all chat, if we want, for a few minutes then get back to work. Those who want to show their cam do, but mostly we don't and we tend to talk about the tasks we are doing and how it's going. It's informal and geared towards independence but with enough communication that I don't feel I'm isolated. I think it's a much better balance than having some panopticon-inspired structure enforcing productivity through embarrassment.